02 July 2017 1:47 AM

PETER HITCHENS: An aircraft carrier with no planes is the least of our worries...

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

I should have been thrilled by the maiden voyage of the new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. I grew up among warships and naval bases and normally love such things. But I wasn’t. Partly it was the fact that, gigantic as she is, she has all the grace and style of a floating hypermarket, or a seaborne car park. When did we forget how to make ships look beautiful?

But much more important was the knowledge that this painfully expensive leviathan is worse than useless. We madly got rid of our Harriers, the only aircraft we had that could have flown from her decks.

An aircraft carrier which has no planes is a metaphor for uselessness, like a pub with no beer, or a car with no wheels. But that is not the most miserable thing about this event.

Even more important, it is almost a century since we were so unprepared, on land, at sea and in the air, for the unpredictable dangers we face. It has, by the way, been Tory governments, which preen themselves for their own supposed patriotism, who have reduced us to our present pitiful state. The Government knows it has done this.

Retired chiefs of all the Armed Services, speaking with immense knowledge and authority, have publicly warned about it in the House of Lords. Such men generally keep quiet. They must be genuinely distressed to have spoken out. What they say openly will be mild compared with the private views of current admirals, generals and air marshals.

So listen to Lord Craig of Radley, former Marshal of the RAF. Recalling how we were able to sustain severe losses in the Falklands and the first Gulf War because of carefully amassed reserves, he said: ‘Losses today, from a very much smaller order of battle than that of the Eighties, on a scale or rate such as those, would all too rapidly decimate our combat power, our resilience and our stamina.’

In other words, we simply do not now have enough kit to cope with a major war.

He added, tellingly, that it is not much use maintaining a nuclear deterrent unless we maintain our conventional strength as well.

Lord West of Spithead, a former First Sea Lord, had still worse news. He was even blunter: ‘The Navy has too few ships and men and is having to make incoherent cuts to keep within the budget.’ Important ships (including the former flagship HMS Ocean) were being paid off, and – astonishingly – we will not even have any surface-to-surface or air-to-surface missiles for the next few years. ‘This is not an abstract issue. For a number of years, we will have ships deployed around the globe that may suddenly come across an opponent because things have escalated, and they will have to fight. I have done this, as have many of us here. We will have ships sunk and people killed. I have been in that position. We are standing into danger.’

Lord West also rightly underlined the Navy’s severe manpower crisis. Years of cuts and skill shortages have made life almost intolerable for experienced men and women, seriously overworked, who have left the service and not been replaced. As for Britannia ruling the waves, forget it. Not long ago, the policy was that we should have roughly 50 major surface ships. Not now. Lord West revealed: ‘We have only 19 escorts. This is a national disgrace for our great maritime nation.’

Remember, these are not the words of some tub-thumper on a street corner, but of a senior naval officer of great knowledge and experience.

But I have not finished. Lord Dannatt, a former head of the Army, joined in the sad chorus. Warning that there were ‘just not enough’ serving soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, he was as plain as his brother officers, he said: ‘We have cut the size of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force too far.’

Pointing out that one day we would need an army in a hurry, he said: ‘I worry about the number of soldiers that we have – or, particularly, do not have. We are carrying too much risk. The last Government from 2010 and this present Government might get away with it, but the future will catch us out at some point and the verdict of history will be damning.’

These are words that it took some courage to say and are far more important than most of the minor squabbles now dominating much of our political life. We have been warned. Do we act, or do we pretend we have not heard? We will pay for this, or our children will. We are standing into danger.

The discovery that Jon Snow, the Channel 4 News anchorman, is perhaps a bit Left-wing, is an amazing breakthrough of investigative journalism. Next, intrepid reporters reveal that water is wet and fire burns. Surely the interesting story about Channel 4 (and also the entire BBC) is that anyone still seriously pretends they are not Left-wing. And why they do that.

Helen's fearless - shame about her comrades

The best thing now on television is ITV’s Fearless, in which Helen McCrory plays a courageous lawyerwho genuinely fights for her clients.

Refreshingly, it does not portray our vainglorious ‘security’ services as spotless heroes keeping us safe.

No free country should idolise such people as we now tend to do.

Helen McCrory plays a courageous lawyer who genuinely fights for her clients in ITV's fearless

But it is not flawless. In reality, modern Left-wingers aren’t all as keen on freedom as Ms McCrory’s character, who (we are ceaselessly reminded) was once a tiresome Greenham Common ban-the-bomb type.

On the contrary, they’re all fans of ‘safe spaces’, where incorrect opinions are banned. A drama starring a Right-wing defender of liberty would be an original change.

If only Boris would confront a real tyrant

Our leaders bray like foghorns at miniature tyrants with whom we have little or nothing to do, such as Libya’s Gaddafi and Syria’s Assad. Sometimes they even bomb them.

But when faced with a real despot, who has the power to hurt us, they cringe and, well, kowtow. It is 20 years since China promised us it would maintain the freedoms we left behind in Hong Kong. But China is not keeping its side of the bargain. Freedom of the press, the independence of the courts and the liberty of the education system are constantly being squeezed by Peking’s stooges.

Worse still, people who the Chinese Politburo do not like are brazenly kidnapped in Hong Kong, smuggled across the border into the clutches of Peking’s repressive state, which has never ceased to lock up and persecute free spirits. This is our direct concern. We are not just entitled to protest, but obliged to do so with all the force at our command.

In response, our normally loud Foreign Secretary, Al ‘Boris’ Johnson, speaks softly and carries a small stick. Can this be the same macho Mr Johnson who rather noisily supported Donald Trump’s illegal bombing of Syria, in response to unproven claims about poison gas use? It can.

I have a simple suggestion for Mr Johnson and all those like him. If his outrage against menacing despots is genuine, then he should express it to all who deserve it, including the Chinese. If it is not genuine, then can he please shut up, and write another book?

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on comments and scroll down

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Perhaps with a more well oiled set of ships we could sail down to China and blow them out of the water......good luck with that. On a serious note, I doubt this country would be very respondant in the face of attack, 3 men in a van seem to have us in disarray so I doubt they would fair much better when faced with a larger scale attack.

Margaret..."I don't know why modern ship are designed to look so clumsy. Traditional ship's lines with their sublime combination of curves always make the vessel look as if they belong in the water, these modern ships with their crude straight lines look plonked down on it"

It is a sad loss, I agree, but curves make good radar contacts - from all angles of direction.

Re: Posted by: J Gribben | 02 July 2017 at 04:09 PM:
'Mr Hitchens has not "defended" the Putin government. He has merely questioned why equally bad or even more repressive governments (China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc) are not given similar criticism by the political/media establishment.'
Peter has a video on YouTube entitled 'Why I like Vladimir Putin'. It lasts for 90 minutes or so. Its title should perhaps be amended to something more accurate, such as: 'Why would I, a highly respected journalist, go to such extraordinary lengths to present the liar, mass murderer and land thief Putin and his thug regime in a positive light?'
Hardly a week passes by without Peter posting a comment designed to please the many fans of Putin who read his blogs. He continues to have respect for the 'great Russian people', despite the fact that many of them are still imperialists with a rather sickening chauvinist mindset. He appears in contrast to feel nothing but contempt for the victims of the shocking cruelty inflicted on vassal states, which continues to this day even after they were supposedly liberated. Indeed Peter has repeatedly made it clear that putin is perfectly entitled to murder his neighbours and steal their land whenever he feels like it. He accepts the findings of the Dutch investigation into M17, yet never express horror at the refusal of this criminal regime to accept responsibility for this atrocity, or any other of the many atrocities committed by it. He often uses the cliched 'Russian bear' analogy just as Farage does. A recent article used the phrase: 'Pushing the bear over a cliff''. But it is the bear who is doing all the pushing - and mass killing of innocents, yet he never condemns it. He refuses to condemn the murders of members of his own profession and even tries to cast doubt on who ultimately gave the order to murder Boris Nemtsov, questioning 'who stood to gain' from such an act. No one particularly stood to gain from the murder of Alexandr Litvinenko either; it was a hate crime and a warning for other dissidents. Who is 'turning up the heat'? (To use a phrase he used in accusation of NATO and its allies in relation to Russia). That would be Putin, who occupies sovereign territory of three independent unitary states in Europe and uses a variety of methods, including a massive troll media blitz, to destabilise democracy in Europe and America.

With regards to who is conservative or Blairite, the following is a quote from ex Chancellor George Osborne from an appearance on the Andrew Marr show
on 11th June 2017 when reviewing the Sunday papers:
"I am speaking & the paper is speaking for a very consistent view, which is
Britain should be an open, optimistic country, outwards looking to the world.
We should be socially liberal, pro business, economically liberal & that is the
position I advocated in government & it is the position I advocated as a
newspaper editor".

I'm not an expert but the development of hypersonic missiles seems to have made aircraft carriers little more than extremely expensive targets. They would be the equivalent of the prince of wales and repulse sinking in WW II. Surely this was what was behind the comments of Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov.

Margaret Howard is completely and obviously wrong in thinking that 'the age of warfare is over'. What a peculiar thing to believe. My evidence for this is the dozens of armed conflicts going on around the world at this very moment. There are plenty of people around who are happy to use force to get what they want; we would be crazy not to be ready to counter that.

The new aircraft carrier is not a thing of beauty , it has few curves , lots of angles though and no aeroplanes .
Its captain suggested parts of its future service could be in foreign aid expeditions .
Britain should have armed forces capable of making a potential aggressor think twice about invading or attacking British interests abroad , we don't have that capability nor perhaps the political will to respond militarily to an aggressor , do we ?
In the event of a direct threat to the country , there are plenty of lads willing to answer the call .
However , the threat is not overt is it , it is the slow creeping threat of assimmilation .
How can Boris Johnson threaten or condemn China or Russia , what possible sanction can he bring to bear on them , or even Monaco for that matter , that would cause either country to stop doing whatever it is , they consider to be in their national interest .

Horace - Mr Hitchens has not "defended" the Putin government. He has merely questioned why equally bad or even more repressive governments (China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc) are not given similar criticism by the political/media establishment.

Despite all the cuts to the armed forces, the national debt has still grown from 600 billion in 2010 to 1.7 trillion currently. And that was under Tory leadership! Adding more than 100 billion a year to the debt cannot go on indefinitely.

The reasons for this increase to the debt are that rich and well-off people want to enjoy their wealth rather than give it to the government; and government welfare handouts are ever increasing, including to foreigners at home (NHS, free housing, education, etc) and abroad (foreign aid, child benefit to children outside the UK, etc). I tend to be more sympathetic to the former group than the latter.

If any conservative leader ran on a platform of eliminating or greatly reducing welfare handouts to non-British citizens (and somewhat reducing them to able-bodied British adults of working age), and made a big point of directing the savings to the military and national debt reduction, I believe they would make electoral gains.

we stopped being a super power one hundred years ago.Its pointless spending money on defence unless you can at least match your enemy and we are not even near Russia or China in terms of military equipment.
The United Kingdom for some strange reason is doing its best to look for an enemy.If only we just kept quiet and concentrated on our own affairs we could save rather a lot of money.No one is going to invade Britain,its of no use to any invader.Its too small for a start and has virtually no natural resources anymore or large manufacturing plants.
I hardly think the Russians or Chinese would be interested in out of town Lidl or Tesco express.

@Aaron:
***As PH has a more rationally sovereign, anti-neoconservative worldview - understanding that today's Britain is a medium-tier power with no terratorial ambitions outside its own limited sphere of influence - from where does he suggest these potential threats may come from?***

Modernist "functionalism" isn't very functional - as anyone who has ever spent time in a trendy minimialist hotel can testify. I've frequently noticed that those who enthuse over modernist design often subscribe to the childish notion that the more stark and minimalist a building, machine etc., is in appearance, the more "functional" it must be. More often than not this is the reverse of the truth.

Ref: Aircraft Carrier. I wonder if anyone has thought what the response would be if there was a ' call to arms' in this country in the event of it coming under threat? One thing is sure that it wouldn't be scenes of long lines of patriotic males and females standing outside recruitment offices - they'd be too busy rioting.

I don't know why modern ship are designed to look so clumsy. Traditional ship's lines with their sublime combination of curves always make the vessel look as if they belong in the water, these modern ships with their crude straight lines look plonked down on it. I remember some years ago driving into Southampton and looking across the container yard at what I thought was a new block of flats until I got closer whence it turned out to be a five star cruise ship. I'm glad I'm old enough to remember being on the dockside when the Queen Mary arrived there for the last time in the late sixties, an unforgettable sight.

It would be easy to blame the pre-eminence of computers in the design world for this simplification but this can't be the reason because the reality is that, thanks to a combination of Monsieur Bezier's pioneering work at Renault and the subsequent development of 3D modelling, computers can handle complex curves more easily today than was possible in the days of plans drawn on paper.

To see proof of this, observe that in the same time that ships have been reduced to a crude collection of straight lines, architects have swung the pendulum the other way with buildings, from the angular brutalism of the fifties/sixties, many "innovative" buildings are now overwhelmed with quite ridiculous combinations of continuously variable curves. One only has to glance at the new Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham to see that it could only have been designed on a computer, or possibly even designed BY the computer.

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